Barcelona, Spain~Taller de Tapas

We saw this restaurant when we were bar-hopping for pinchos and decided to try it out for dinner. It was really crowded during lunch time and the aromas coming out of the restaurant smelled delicious. 

Another good sign was that there were a lot of stickers on the tour. These stickers became our best guess on whether the restaurant would be good or not. It looked like this restaurant received a bunch of positive ratings. 



Clams

Clams in a garlic and wine sauce. Yum!

Bread-It was more like crackers

We ordered this bread to soak up all the wonderful flavors from the clams, shrimp, and sausage juices. 

Chorizo in Cider

The chorizo cooked in cider was one of Mike's favorite dishes throughout our whole trip in Spain.  Pretty much any dish containing chorizo, sausage, ham, etc was well received by Mike.  Mike liked it so much that he tried to replicate it back home.  It's a really simply dish-it's pretty much chorizo sausage, cider, onions, and some spices.

Gambas ajillo-Basically this is like shrimp scampi

I ordered this dish by mistake. I had wanted to order shrimp-gambas with a spicy sauce. But then got my Spanish words mixed up and ordered "ajillo"which means garlic. It was tasty, but I've had better shrimp scampi. 

Patatas Fritas-French Fries and mayonnaise

Yup, like typical Americans, we ordered Patatas Fritas a few times during our trip.  It's deep-fried potato wedges topped with a mayonnaise sauce.  I once ordered it by mistake with a bolognese sauce on it. 

Taller de Tapas
Placa Sant Josep Oriol 9
Barcelona, Spain

Churros con Chocolate

Hi All! I've been feeling under the weather for the past couple of weeks, and haven't felt up to blog posting.  Then I had a laptop scare and thought a virus ate through my hard drive. :(  I'm continuing with the Spain posts...

Chocolate con Churros (Chocolate and Churros)

Look at that thick rich hot chocolate. Spanish hot chocolate tastes almost like warm chocolate pudding with less sugar. There is a lot more starch in this hot chocolate.  I don't know how someone could finish a whole cup on their own!

I guess we looked like tourists, so our chocolate and churros came with a packet of sugar.  We tasted the hot chocolate and then quickly added the whole packet.  If you notice, the churros also do not contain the familiar sprinkle of sugar either. It's more like a fried piece of dough.

This is the traditional way to eat churros and chocolate. You are supposed to dip the churros into the chocolate. 

Look at that churro! We saw this churro on the streets in Seville.

Mike wanted to stop and eat more churros. We were given a packet of  granulated sugar again. We both agreed that the hot chocolate was sweet enough for our liking, so Mike dumped the sugar packet on to the churros.

I think this was more of a touristy spot. This hot chocolate was similar in texture to the instant hot cocoa we are familiar with in the USA.

Barcelona~Bibao Berria

This was our first "pinchos" tapas experience of our trip. From what we gather pincho bars serve smaller tapas which are called "pinchos" (Spanish for the word "spike").  When you are finished eating, the servers count the number of toothpicks left on your plate and charge you accordingly.

Sardine on a vegetable sauce. I thought that this was the best flavored pincho that we ordered.  I wasn't very adventurous and I chose pinchos that looked familar to me.

Angulas Pincho and a pincho with cheese and quince jam.

Iberico Ham Pincho

Fried items.

Angulas -Baby eels. I thought that they tasted a bit like unflavored fishcake. 

We did not select any of the dessert pinchos because this was our first pinchos bar and we were planning on bar-hopping for our lunch that day. 

Bibao Berria

Seville, Spain~Eslava

Restaurant Eslava in Seville was hands down Mike and my favorite restaurant during out trip to Spain. It was so good that we went there twice in one day! We went there on the same day because we found this restaurant on the last day of our trip. 

Another Travel Tip-If there are a bunch of Michelin stickers on the wall/door next to the restaurant, there is a good chance that the food is wonderful!

We could only read a few words on the menu, so we relied on other restaurant patrons for help.  It was a neat experience, Mike was ordering "Un Chorizo por favor," and we received some glaring looks and were told not to order that and everything else on the menu was WAY better. So, for the first time in our lives we had complete strangers order our food (and the freak out for me was we didn't even know the price of the dishes!)

Solomillo-Pork tenderloin in cream sauce

Spinach casserole with cream sauce

Croquettes

Salmohero-So good. Mike and I are not fans of cold soups (i.e. gazpacho, cream of asparagus soup), but this Spanish version of gazpacho was delicious. It tasted like a creamy cold tomato soup topped with chopped boiled eggs, bacon pieces, and topped with olive oil.  I found out from a friend that the creaminess of the soup is actually from ground bread crumbs.  This soup is definitely worth it for a remake at home!

Olives and almonds. This was the appetizer they start people off with

Blood Sausage-Meh. Mike ate it. It wasn't bad, just different. 

Ortigas (sea anemones).  Our new friends also ordered this dish for us. They asked if we liked seafood and I was like, "sure."  While I was eating this dish, I was mentally checking off all the seafood I knew (nope, not lobster, crab, shrimp, fish, squid, octopus, clams, oysters, uni....). I was a bit disturbed, but kept eating it because hey most fried things taste good.  We went back to our hotel and googled "ortigas" and realized it was sea anemones (it's Nemo's home in "Finding Nemo").

Some kind of sweet salty mushroomy goodness topped with a sunny side up egg. Everyone in the restaurant was ordering this, so as a lemming would do, we ordered it, not knowing what it was.  (that's another restaurant tip-when in doubt and lacking the language skills, if a lot of people are ordering a dish and it looks good,point and order).

Razor Clams.  Mike thought he was ordering me mushrooms, but apparently he ordered me clams. I was not complaining because I like clams and this was the second time in my life that I had razor clams (the other was in Barcelona a couple days prior). 

This was the best sangria I've had in my life. It was probably because it was sweet and tasted like juice. 

Sweet short ribs with potatoes. Mike said that the flavor was similar to char siu. 

At the end of the day the damage was not too bad. I think that our lunch bill was about 25 euros ($42) and our dinner was about 21 euros ($36).  That's including at least 5 tapas for each meal and two alcoholic drinks.  Not too shabby, not too shabby. 

c/Eslava 5
tel. 954 906 568
13.00 – midnight
closed Sunday evening & Monday

My New Time Waster (but it's so fun!)

Have any of you heard of Pinterest? It's a really cool site that allows you to "pin" pictures (and links to websites, blogs, etc) onto organized boards. Then in a Facebook-esque way, your friends can see what you pin and you can "re-pin" or "like" these pictures.
One of my co-workers showed me it and I thought that it was kind of neat. Then I started spending hours online looking at all the creative foods and DIY people "pin." If you would like to look at my meagerly pinned boards, click here.

I wanted to use Pinterest as a virtual notebook of innovative items and food items I found online-kind of like an quick pictorial version of "bookmarking" websites that you enjoy.

Only downside is that you cannot "hide" your profile for only you to see, since the philosophy is to browse and share your interests with others. 

If you would like an invite to Pinterest, send your email address to me.  It's much faster if you are invited to join Pinterest versus requesting an invite on the main site.

Bacon Jam!!!!

A couple weeks ago I decided that I'd be ambitious and try to make some bacon jam.  Bacon jam you ask?  Yeah, it's basically a spread consisting of bacon, onion, and spices.  I thought that it would make good Christmas gifts for the foodies I know. I decided to only make a small batch before cooking down 3 POUNDS of bacon.

"Good Quality Bacon."  I'm not a big bacon eater-unless it is really crispy and a lot of the fat has rendered off, so I had to ask Mike for help on what constitutes "Good Quality Bacon."  I settled on Hormel's Black Label Bacon from Sam's Club because Mike said, "That's higher quality than the bacon we usually buy." *I'm not sure if Mike was referring to the turkey bacon that I buy for myself. 


I also bought a huge container of real maple syrup from Sam's Club.

Here's a secret...when I want to experiment in the kitchen, I search online for recipes. I scour the Internet (okay for about 5-10 minutes) and then compile the recipes that sound good based on the ingredients and how they match in my mind.

I then compile them, omit ingredients that I:
 1) do not like; 2) do not have in the house; 3) am not willing to purchase
In regards to the cooking technique I choose:
1) the quickest and easiest method, unless there is a apparent reason why the extra time is a necessity
2) use the technique that involves equipment and gadgets that I have in the house
If I realize that I do not have enough of an ingredient while I am cooking
1) Omit the ingredients
2) Substitute it with ingredient(s) that I think will work.  (i.e. I used some brown sugar once in a lemon bar recipe because I ran out of granulated sugar). 

Putting the cooked bacon back into the pot with the caramelized onions and other goodies.



Stirring all the ingredients in a crock pot.

Bacon Jam-My Version (an amalgamation of all the recipes I liked online)
Ingredients
1 pound good quality smoked bacon (cut into 1" pieces)
2 cups of thinly sliced onion
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4-1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoons Sriracha sauce
1/4 t of chili flakes
1 cup coffee
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 t black pepper

Directions
Cook the bacon in batches over medium high heat until the fat is rendered off the bacon and it is just starting to crisp. Set the bacon on the side. Pour out the bacon grease (you can use it for something else).

Keep 1-2 tablespoons of the bacon fat in the pan/pot and then dd the onion and garlic and cook over medium heat until the onions have caramelized.

Return the bacon to the pan/pot and add all the remaining ingredients (sugar, coffee, spices, etc). Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.

*For the next step, I decided to transfer the mixture from the pot into a crock pot.
Simmer over low heat for 3-4 hours until you can no longer tell the onion from the bacon and it has a thick, jam-like consistency and deep rich brown color. Occasionally stir the mixture and add water if it looks like it is becoming to dry.

Cool the mixture and then transfer it to a food processor. Chop/blend the mixture until the desired texture that you would like. I like the slightly rustic look of chunks of bacon in my jam, so I did not puree my mixture.

Let cool and place in a glass jars, the refrigerate. Take out of fridge ~1 hr before serving, so jam will be at room temperature.  I haven't tested this out, but I'm sure you could heat the jam in the microwave before serving too. Serve with crackers.

Some of the other websites I viewed said to add a splash of vanilla extract to round out the flavor.  Mike wanted to add some smokey notes to the jam. I did not want to ruin the jam, so we tested out these extra flavoring in small containers. We're glad to report that the addition of either flavor creates an edible tasty jam.  Although when I make the jam again for gifts I do plan on adding the liquid smoke....and I'm still teetering on the addition of vanilla extract. 

I brought it to a friend's house for a party and it was well received. That's enough of a seal of approval before I start making it for gifts. 

Spain Sights

I finally got around to posting the first pictures from our trip to SPAIN! Based on the slow posting, you would think that Mike and I were on vacation for weeks, but in reality we visited Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville in a little over one week.  We enjoyed our trip and have many experiences to share with you all.

We've been slowly getting back into the groove of things back home (taking care of the puppy, our apartment, dealing with the pile of things to do on my desk at work, going to Christmas parties, etc), and blogging got pushed on the side. 

Here are some of the non-food highlights from our trip. 


Sagrada Familia in Barcelona



View of Barcelona from Park Guell

Park Guell Architecture

Antoni Gaudi's Casa Mila

Metropol Parasol in Seville

Plaza de Espana in Seville